During the war with Iran, Jan was enlisted in the army to serve as a night guard. He always fell asleep at the wrong times. Somebody told him: “Jan, you are a soldier. You can’t just sleep whenever you want.” Jan replied: “Why?” The other one asked: “Why can’t you sleep?” Jan replied: “No, why am I a soldier?”
Dunya Mikhail, Diary of a Wave outside the Sea, 2009 (translated with Elizabeth Winslow)
Many excellent Iraqi novels and personal accounts are now available in English translation, including:
- Riverbend, Baghdad Burning and Baghdad Burning II, 2005-2006
- Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad, 2018 (trans. Jonathan Wright)
- Hassan Blasim (ed)., Iraq + 100: Stories from Another Iraq, 2016
- Hassan Blasim, The Corpse Exhibition: And Other Stories of Iraq, 2014
- Dunya Mikhail, The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq, 2018 (trans. Max Weiss)
- Sinan Antoon, The Baghdad Eucharist, 2017
- See also Iraq Blog Count, a registry of Iraq blogs created by Salam Adil and Abbas Hawazin.
Short stories available online:
- Dhia Jubaili, “A Deadly Joke,” Banipal
- Mahmoud Saeed, “Lizards’ Colony,” World Literature Today, Nov. 2012 (trans. William Hutchins)
Childrens’:
- Jeanette Winter, The Librarian of Basra: A True Story from Iraq, HMH 2005 (on Alia Muhammad Baker, chief librarian of Basra’s Central Library)
Iraq: 15 Years On 